For years, pundits have proclaimed that the Linux Desktop is coming, and yet
it was still lacking in some of the critical collaboration apps that
enterprises rely on.

Some have argued that without key collaboration
applications that can interface with Microsoft's Exchange, enterprises won't
adopt Linux.

That's going to change this year.

Collaboration applications, old and new, are coming to Linux desktops and
servers en masse.

Among the vendors lining up to the
Linux and open source trough are IBM, Zimbra, Scalix and OpenXchange. The
offerings may well also help to dissuade some from using proprietary
alternatives, such as Microsoft's Exchange.

Zimbra is announcing version 4.0 of its collaboration suite (ZCS), which
includes e-mail, calendar and content-sharing features.

The company will not be rolling out support for Sametime on the Linux desktop and on Linux servers at the same time, though. The desktop client is expected later this summer, and the server is expected in early 2007.